Embodiments of the present invention relate to systems that can be used collaboratively, and more particularly to techniques for providing positional information with respect to these systems to enhance the collaborative efforts performed using such systems.
An Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) system (also referred to as an electronic whiteboard system) offers several advantages over traditional chalk and board systems. In an IWB system, a user's writings are converted to digital information (also referred to as digital representation of the writing), which is then projected and displayed on a display surface (like a whiteboard) of the IWB system. Multiple such IWB systems may be communicatively coupled via a communication network (such as the Internet) and participate in a collaborative session. For example, a first IWB system and a second IWB system situated remotely from the first IWB system may be involved in a collaborative session such that information written by a first user at the first IWB system is converted to a digital representation or digital information and the digital information is projected on a display surface of the first IWB system and also on a display surface of the second IWB system. Likewise, information written by a second user at the second IWB system may be converted to digital information and the digital information projected on the surfaces of both the first and the second IWB systems. This establishes a collaborative environment for the users of the IWB systems.
Remote interaction using distributed IWB systems is however quite complicated. For example, a user at the first IWB system typically has no idea of where the user at the second IWB system is going to write and vice versa. This often causes “collisions” in the information written on the interactive whiteboards. Merely capturing a video at the first IWB system and communicating it to the second IWB system is not sufficient since a user at the first IWB system may obstruct or obscure the information displayed on the whiteboard of the first IWB system.